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Ex-Sen. Leland Yee pleads not guilty to expanded charges

Senator Leland Yee is chased by reporters as he leaves the federal building in San Francisco, CA, Wednesday Mar. 26, 2014.

Senator Leland Yee is chased by reporters as he leaves the federal building in San Francisco, CA, Wednesday Mar. 26, 2014.

Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle

Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle

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Senator Leland Yee is chased by reporters as he leaves the federal building in San Francisco, CA, Wednesday Mar. 26, 2014.

Senator Leland Yee is chased by reporters as he leaves the federal building in San Francisco, CA, Wednesday Mar. 26, 2014.

Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle

Ex-Sen. Leland Yee pleads not guilty to expanded charges

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Former state Sen. Leland Yee pleaded not guilty Thursday to an expanded indictment in his corruption case that included two new charges of money-laundering.

The San Francisco Democrat was first charged in April, along with more than two dozen other defendants, of accepting $62,000 in bribes from FBI agents posing as contributors in exchange for legislative favors, and for illegally importing firearms from the Philippines.

A new indictment in July accused Yee and Keith Jackson, a former San Francisco school board president who acted as Yee’s consultant and fundraiser, of using the senator’s unsuccessful campaigns for San Francisco mayor in 2011 and California secretary of state last year as “racketeering enterprises” to collect illicit contributions.

The latest federal grand jury indictment, issued Jan. 29, added allegations that Yee and Jackson had tried to conceal the source of bribes the senator allegedly received for arranging a meeting between a purported donor and another lawmaker and for smuggling guns from the Philippines.

They are accused of accepting $11,000 from an undercover agent in June 2013 to set up the meeting, and of trying to cover their tracks by soliciting $12,600 in campaign contributions from three unidentified donors and paying them back in cash. In similar transactions, they are charged with accepting $6,800 from another agent in March 2014 as part of the gun-running agreement, then soliciting and repaying $3,000 in contributions from two more unidentified donors.

The two money-laundering charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison, the same penalty that applies to the bribery and conspiracy charges Yee and Jackson already faced.

Both men are free on bail and are scheduled to go to trial in U.S. District Court in June, along with two other defendants. A separate trial is planned later this year for 24 more defendants, including Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a former Chinatown gang leader who is accused of running a Chinese American community organization as a racketeering enterprise that trafficked in drugs, weapons and stolen goods.